Scream at a Wall: DARKEST HOUR, HYBORIAN, ROZAMOV, and More

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Wipe the blood from your teeth and get in the pit; it’s time for a recap of this week’s best hardcore, metal, and punk rock. It’s unseasonably warm out, so let’s get hot and heavy with some brutal jams. This week, we’ve got everything from grindcore to stoner rock to ’90s hardcore, so there’s a little something for everybody. Strap in, kiddies; it’s time to rock.

This is a bold statement, but Godless Prophets & The Migrant Flora is definitely Darkest Hour’s best album to date. The Washington, D.C. heavy weights are at their rawest on this record, thanks in part to producer Kurt Ballou. Darkest Hour have always been a band of extremes; with their relentless speed and penchant for melodic, drawn-out guitar solos, they’ve always pushed their own limits. That’s all on display here, but there’s something more earnest and grounded about this recording; it’s a band finding themselves. Take, for instance, “Those Who Survived.” It’s a galloping metal number but it has shades of punk rock and hardcore laced throughout. And that drum sound! Ballou has definitely brought out the best in this band. Godless Prophets & The Migrant Flora is set to be released on March 1oth and we highly recommend you check it out. Darkest Hour deserve your full attention.

Hyborian’s “As Above, So Below” is a track that Baroness and Mastodon fans will love. It’s a riff-driven rocker that has just the right amount of crunch, melody, and gruff. They’ve released a video for the song, but it’s not much more than the dudes in the band just jamming out in what appears to be a garage. We won’t hold that against them, though, because this song is freaking killer and we’re banging our heads to hard to watch a video anyway. If you like metal made by scruffy dudes who look like they could fix your car just as easily as they could blaze through a Sabbath tune, Hyborian is the band for you.

The slow, crushing doom of Rozamov is breathtaking. The band just released The Mortal Road and it is an album you truly have to experience. Thick and heavy, it hits like Times of Grace-era Neurosis, but with a bigger focus on rhythm and harmony. Rozamov hit all the right post-metal and doom notes, but they have an underlying groove that runs through the entire album. The Mortal Road is equal parts destructive and beautiful. It’s thunderous and catchy, mean and heartfelt. Give it a listen below and then pickup the a digital copy from the band’s bandcamp for a mere $5.

Crusades play a brand of hardcore that doesn’t come around enough anymore. These guys sound like the late ’90s /early 2000s. Shades of emo and post-hardcore weave into their songs producing a unique, vibrant sound. Driven by squealing guitars and blown-out vocals, Crusades are a band on the edge, pushing and pulling you throughout every track. It’s melodramatic, sure, but that’s a big part of what makes it work. There was time when calling something emo wasn’t an insult, and Crusades harken back to that day. It’s easy to imagine these guys opening up for peak AFI or Taking Back Sunday. Emotional and pure, Crusades are a killer act that reminds us it’s okay to wear your heart on your sleeve when you rock out.

We’ve expressed our fondness for the new Unearthly Trance record more than once. It’s a fantastic collection of sonic brutality that everyone should listen to, no doubt. In addition to all the praise we’ve heaped upon them, we wanted to direct your attention to this recently released music video, which is strangely hypnotic. It’s for the song “Into the Spiral” and you could say it’s uneventful, but that won’t stop it from drawing you in. The mixture of colors and landscapes punctuated by three cloaked figures unfolds like a weird fiction tale: slow, dark, and brimming with dread. Unearthly Trance is slowly becoming one of our favorite bands and it’s because of stuff like this. Too awesome.

Chaotic and unabating, Artificial Brain’s “Synthesized Instinct” will grind you into dust. It’s the sound of robot armies disintegrating human flesh. It’s ugly and technical, a strange fusion of death metal and transcendent science fiction. Artificial Brain isn’t for everybody, but death metal that sounds like it’s being performed by mechanical minotaurs is something we can get behind. Check out the song below and enjoy cacophony of gore it brings into your mind.

That’s it for us this week. What new grindcore, punk rock, and metal are you looking forward to? What’s getting your blood pumping lately? Let us know in the comments.

Image: Darkest Hour

Gif: Fire and Ice/20th Century Fox

Benjamin Bailey writes for the Nerdist and can be found on Twitter talking about Godzilla, comic books, and hardcore music.